


Butter Side Down

by ambiguously



Category: Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, F/M, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-13 18:48:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15371019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/pseuds/ambiguously
Summary: Val knows one thing: there's always a war.





	Butter Side Down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Artemis1000](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis1000/gifts).



There's always a war.

She was five when the first war came. Nothing big, nothing you'd learn in a history reel, nothing but a petty squabble that started over grazing rights and ended in every homestead burned to the ground. Her family fled, looking for another village and eventually another planet. Nobody wanted them, not caring enough to kill them but not friendly enough to let them live within the city walls, only tolerating them at the outskirts.

"We are pacifists," her father would try to explain, holding out a datapad with his religious beliefs enumerated in the old tongue and in Aurabesh. "We did not fight, we were chased out. Please allow us to stay." All the pleas accomplished was to mark them as strangers, as much as their colorful shawls and wooden shoes did. Pacifists were suspicious, and their odd ways were suspicious, and when the city fought with their neighbors, the odd religious freaks living outside were the first enemy they saw. The new house burned as brightly as the old had, and once more they had to flee.

Val is almost sure she knows what planet her parents live on these days. She's positive they'd be ashamed of her life. She tries not to think about them much. She walked out at seventeen, leaving a note and her shawl and her shoes. She stole the credits from her mother's secret jar as she left, and she used them to buy herself a cheap pair of leather boots and a blaster.

Not every war was declared. Some were private and mean, even smaller than one village. Sometimes there was a wealthy man who wanted a rival gone. Sometimes there was a woman who wanted revenge. Val spent her days in and out of gangs, on and off jobs.

Ten years ago, Republic forces wiped out the Separatist cell where Val was putting in time. She wasn't political back then, and hasn't found a reason to start. The Separatists had money, and Val has always liked to eat rather than starve. Go here, be an organic face to smile as the droids land there, hand out supplies, and here's your wages. It wasn't much of a job, and she didn't think much of her employers. The other Separatists lived on promises of freedom. Val knew without a doubt that the Republic troops told themselves the same lie: the other side hates freedom and eats their bread upside down, therefore we march to battle. War hasn't ever been freedom. Freedom is what you get when you slide out the door before the war gets you.

The Republic became the Empire. The war never stopped. 

Beckett gets it. He's got the same look in his eyes she's seen in her mirror too many times. Someone else's war came for him. "We fight on our terms," she told him the day he met. "Not theirs. Never theirs."

They circled around each other for a long time. The life of a mercenary doesn't invite friendships, and lovers are best taken and discarded without getting messy feelings involved. Val has learned these truths the hard way. She tried fitting them both to him, until one day they were pinned down together under heavy fire and she realized she loved the son of a bantha.

"We are going to get out of this," she promised him, trying not to notice the bleeding gash on his forehead.

"It's been a ride, babe," he said, trying to smile. Blaster bolts flying around them.

Val growled at him, and she dug through her pack until she found the grenades. "You are not dying. We are getting out alive, and you are taking me somewhere nice. Somewhere with drinks that haven't been brewed in an engine room or in someone's boot."

The grenades worked. The drinks were not as good as she'd hoped. She and Beckett never parted ways again.

The Empire controls everything these days, and what they don't, the cartels are happy to run in their place. Both pay for services rendered, the gangs a little better than the Imperials. She'll work for Crimson Dawn if it means she gets to eat tomorrow. Beckett's got dreams of retiring some day and settling down together. Val listens to him ramble, and enjoys hearing about the role he's cast for her inside his dream. It's a nice dream.

Then she cleans her blaster and checks it, and she checks her supplies, and she performs her recon like usual. Dreams don't feed them, and there's always going to be another war to fight.


End file.
